The Lost Country - Softcover

'The Lost Country is almost a jolly book. But it also reminds us of just how good Gay was . . . if you fancy a blast of full-on Americana, it is hard to think of anything recently that blasts in such a brilliantly sustained way - or that makes much of contemporary fiction suddenly seem so bloodless by comparison.' (The Times)

Gay's two-fisted, wise-cracking picaresque is strong on description and local colour, with saloon brawls, prayer meetings, and "people with no trade save porchsitting . . . and mean-looking dogs hopeless on knotted chain tethers anchored to old car casings. (Phil Baker Sunday Times)

Gay's great abilities in character building, richness of language and storytelling are on full display in this posthumous novel. (Charles Frazier, author of COLD MOUNTAIN)

Infidelities, prison breaks, murderous revenge, biblical language, and a deep kinship between the land and its inhabitants?Gay's novel is full-on Southern Gothic and will delight fans of the genre. (Kirkus)

Gay reaffirms his Southern Gothic virtuosity in this dark, brooding tale [his] intense portrayal of the economic despair of 1950s rural Tennessee is authentic and gripping. (Publishers Weekly)

Billy Edgewater, discharged from the Navy and touched by a rising desperation, sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D.L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are. Hounded at every turn by scams, vigilantes, grievous loss, and violence, Edgewater navigates the long road home, searching for a place that may be nothing more than memory. Hailed by the New York Times Book Review as 'a seemingly effortless storyteller', with this novel William Gay once again shows why his work is often talked about alongside the great Southern novelists, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy.